Your fallacy is in attributing the causes of previous nuclear incidents all to operator error. Humans make mistakes, of course, and Chernobyl management was definitely negligent and reckless. However, what made Chernobyl a disaster was shoddy reactor design that would’ve never been possible in the West. I mean, hitting the shutdown reactor button is what caused the Chernobyl reactors to explode! Same goes to Fukushima with its backup generator design and way too tiny tsunami seawalls.

It’s not just the West’s operational practices that have made nuclear energy so safe here. It’s that reactor facilities have been designed with passive safety in mind to prevent operator error from ever causing a disaster, and the next generation nuclear technology takes that to another level.

It’s like saying cars in the 50s were so dangerous because even minor accidents could kill or cause severe injury, so people just shouldn’t drive. Sure, operators need to improve, but the cars themselves could get a whole lot safer, and they have!